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Modular Nuclear Reactors
Published in Yatish T. Shah, Modular Systems for Energy and Fuel Recovery and Conversion, 2019
Urenco with others commissioned a study by TU-Delft and Manchester University on the basis of which it has called for European development of very small—5–10 MWe—“plug and play” inherently- safe reactors. These are based on graphite-moderated, helium- cooled HTR concepts such as the UK’s Dragon reactor. The fuel block design is based on that of the FSV reactor in the United States. It would use 17%–20% enriched uranium and possibly thorium fuel. The 10 MWt design uses TRISO fuel, is helium-cooled, and has beryllium oxide reflector. It can produce 800°C process heat or backup and off-grid power. This “U-battery” would run for 5 years before refueling and servicing. The reactor is 1.8 m diameter [1,8–10,39,40,51–54].
High-Temperature Reactors
Published in William J. Nuttall, Nuclear Renaissance, 2022
Stoke Poges is an affluent small community located in South Buckinghamshire. With its odd name and its ancient, indeed partly Anglo-Saxon, village church it is an unlikely sounding location for the headquarters of an international nuclear conglomerate: Urenco. Urenco is an unusual company established by an international treaty, the Treaty of Almelo in 1971. Historically owned by the British and Dutch governments with German participation via two large power companies, Urenco operates several facilities in Europe and the United States. At the heart of its business lies uranium fuel enrichment. Urenco was an early driving force behind a particularly bold HTGR idea—the ‘U-Battery’. Now championed by a consortium that has brought in Rolls-Royce, National Nuclear Laboratory, Costain, Cavendish Nuclear, Kinectrics, and Jacobs alongside Urenco, the U-Battery ambition is to produce a very safe, high-temperature, microreactor [131]. The technological proposition has been developed to the level of a conceptual design through the input of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands [132]. The U-Battery design is for a very small 4 Mwe (10 MWth) system with maximal simplicity of design and straightforward modular assembly. For example, the reactor pressure vessel can be fabricated in steel rather than manufactured via the far more challenging forging process [133]. The U-Battery is a helium-cooled prismatic HTGR based upon TRISO fuel kernels. As such it is a relatively conventional prismatic HTGR concept. One particular innovation is for the use of a nitrogen gas secondary loop rather than a steam supply system. This will allow for low-cost air-turbine technology to be used [133].
Initial Exploratory Reactor Physics Assessment of Nonconventional Fuel Concepts for Very Compact Small Modular Reactors Using Hydroxides as Coolants and/or Moderators
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2022
Although the computed values for FU and UU seem low in comparison to a large-scale PT-HWR operating with NU fuel, they must also be put in context and compared with the expected FU and UU of other SMRs using a similar type of fuel (19.75 wt% 235U/U). For example, a variant of the U-Battery concept,62 which is an HTGR-type SMR, achieves a BU of approximately 70 MWd/kg with 17 wt% 235U/U–enriched uranium, with a core size of diameter = 252 cm and height = 320 cm. Thus, the FU is ~412 MWd/kg-fissile, the UU is ~2.14 MWd/kg-NUmined, and the RUU = 0.28. These values are much lower than what is achieved by many of the hydroxide cooled and/or moderated SMR lattices discussed in this study.